


Three Things

by kirakirafairyprincess



Category: Akatsuki no Yona | Yona of the Dawn
Genre: F/M, My First Work in This Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-13
Updated: 2016-09-13
Packaged: 2018-08-14 20:24:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8027755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kirakirafairyprincess/pseuds/kirakirafairyprincess
Summary: There are a lot of things Hak never tells his princess. Maybe he will, if she ever bothers to ask, but there are only three things he can never tell her.





	Three Things

There are a lot of things Hak never tells his princess. Maybe he will, if she ever bothers to ask, but there are only three things he can never, will never, tell her.

 

The first is that Soo-won, her beloved cousin, didn't see her as a woman.

Didn't, didn't, didn't. Past tense.

That no matter how much she wore the finest of clothes and perfume, how much she fussed over her hair, Soo-won simply doesn't care.

She was a child.

But that was before her cousin killed her father and destroyed everything she knew, before she became a warrior, not just a princess.

She wasn't a woman to Soo-won before, but now...Hak will not pretend he knows the workings of the mind of someone he used to call a friend.

 

The second gets stuck in his throat whenever he tries to voice it. Because it was both a compliment and a painful truth.

 _You've grown so much,_ tasted like acid on his tongue. It speaks of his failure to protect her innocence and her carefree smiles from the darkness their kingdom possess.

He couldn't tell her that he's impressed she got used to travelling, to camping, to eating anything to survive. He doesn't say it because it feels too much like looking down on everything she's built and admitting that he couldn't do as much as he hoped he could and that she had to fill in where he failed.

 

The third, Hak never says because he is sure she has no desire to hear it.

 _I will die for you, I am loyal to you, not because you are a princess nor because of a dead king's wish, but because I am in love with you_ feels both too long and too short to express his love.

'Marry Yona and you'll get me,' Soo-won had laughed then, perhaps not taking what he said seriously.

But Hak was serious. He has always been serious when it comes to Yona.

He would sign away his life serving the man who took the only girl he loved because that was what would've made her happy back then.

He was willing to live the rest of his life watching, just watching, as long as Yona is happy, even if he wasn't the cause of it.

If the Four Dragons ever find out Hak knows what they'll say. Shin-ah will call it selflessnes, Kija will say it's due sacrifice, and Jae-ha, the bastard, will call him a martyr. But Zeno, the immortal 17 year-old he is, will definitely say he's being selfish.

Hak can't help but agree.

Yona never asked for eternal devotion, never asked for a knight (she asked for a prince once upon a time, Hak likes to pretend it happened a long, long time ago and that he can no longer remember), never asked for anyone to die for her.

That's fine. Hak doesn't need to be asked.

So he fights, bickers, and hides the heartbreak behind a wall of snark. Because it's better this way.

He pretends he's selfless, because pretending is easier than facing the guilt.

But sometimes when no one's looking and he can no longer pretend from himself, he prays.

He prays to a being he may or may not believe in to please, please don't make Yona too strong. He wouldn't know what to do if she became too strong for him to protect.

What's a knight, unwanted he may be, without a princess?

He prays and then he pretends that the most selfish thing he's done is ask for someone to be weak and dependent.

 

There are three things Hak can't tell Yona so he pretends, because it's better this way.


End file.
